by Robin Cain
My simple life is just fine by me.
Hank headed down to Frankie’s office to perform the job he was hired to do.
twenty-five
IT WAS SEVEN O’CLOCK Tuesday morning and there seemed to be a few too many people trying to conduct business within the small confines of Sullivan Police Headquarters. With the night shift nearly over, the departing patrol crew was being replaced by an entire new one—which put too many bodies in too little space. Sergeant Patrick Temple, a stern ex-military man, stood in front a group of seated officers, briefing them before they went out on the streets. He wore his crisply pressed uniform and highly polished, steel-toed, black work boots. His Marine-style haircut, shaved close to his scalp, showed off his square jaw and muscular build. Standing tall in front of his seated crew, he was qualified and prepared to do battle or protect a city.
With roll call now completed, Temple brought his team up to speed on the previous shift’s events. He began with the biggest news first.
“By now I’m sure you’ve all heard about the Jane Doe found in the lake Sunday morning. Still no ID and waiting for autopsy results. Head trauma—type unknown, but the jury is still out on that one. Late thirties to forties; appeared to be in water awhile, and homicide is currently working it. Just FYI.”
Temple matter-of-factly continued on, informing the officers of a new procedure requiring new forms to be filled out on stops that were made. Feeling there was already too much paperwork involved in the job, the squad members all groaned.
“Hey, listen up,” Temple told them. “That beer run we caught the tail end of yesterday? We caught a break.”
A series of Mighty Moe convenience stores had been targeted all over town. While the clerks were preoccupied with a long line of customers, a lone male would come in the door, grab a twelve-pack of beer from one of the store’s front displays and run off to an awaiting car. Usually occurring during the afternoon rush hour when people were coming in and out, the beer run’s success depended on a clerk being busy and not paying attention. The thief wasn’t usually worth chasing down, but it would get called in to Dispatch. The nearest unit would respond but was always too late to catch anyone.
A local resident out doing yard work the day before had heard screeching tires. Turning to see a blue Jeep blow a red light and go speeding down the street, the resident quickly called it in, providing a plate number and description. Police were able to locate the Jeep and the driver a few blocks away. Lucky break—it turned out to be the beer run guy. Temple and his shift had been hoping this was the same guy responsible for the latest string.
Pain-in-the-ass kids, Temple thought as he relayed the latest details. The perp was a seventeen-year-old local kid, out in daddy’s Jeep with nothing better to do. They had him down in lockup, stripped of all possessions, sitting in a windowless eight-by-twelve cell, with nothing in there but a bunk, a sink and a toilet. Daddy hadn’t gotten him out quite yet. Temple hoped this might scare the little punk into behaving. These stupid-ass kids were such a waste of a cop’s valuable time.
“Turns out we also had another witness ID this kid, so we got him. Good job, everyone.” He knew it was important for these guys’ morale to hear about something going their way for once. Too often it seemed the bad guys got off. “Okay, get out there and do some good. Stay alert.”
After much shuffling of chairs and paperwork, the officers went about their jobs. While Temple was gathering his notes, Detective Frost walked over to join him.
“Hey, sarge. News on our Jane Doe,” Frost began. He reached the lectern where Temple stood, watching as members of the group, readying themselves for the start of their long “Ten,” left the room. Most of this unit worked four ten-hour days with three days off, decided by a seniority-based, semi-annual bidding process. Frost, like everyone else, had started in patrol but, after working this shift for years and finally passing the exam, he’d made detective. With better pay and better hours as long as the crooks cooperated, Detective grade was a step up. Since Frost had come from this shift, he had worked with a lot of these guys. Sergeant Temple had been his partner back in the day and they had remained close, despite their different assignments.
“Looked like a possible drowning with a head wound, but turns out she was dead before she hit the water. No water in her lungs. Coroner found signs of a struggle beyond the blunt-object trauma,” Frost explained to Temple. A civilian would have misread the excitement in his voice. In homicide, a fresh body meant a fresh case—a new set of facts. Like most detectives, Frost considered a murder victim a slap in the face. It meant some sick clown assumed he was smarter than everyone else. Frost took that personally.
“No shit?” Temple answered. “Any idea yet who the Jane Doe is?”
“No hit in Missing Persons. They’re seeing if they can get prints, but not likely,” Frost replied. “Something will turn up. Media has a hold of it, so maybe somebody out there saw or heard something.”
“Yeah,” Temple said, nodding in hopeful agreement. “Thanks for the update.”
“Okay, I’d better get back upstairs. Talk to you later,” Frost told him. As he turned to leave, he saw the doughnuts on the break room table and chuckled to himself. He walked over and took one. Got to love being a cop, he thought heading out of the room. There was always food lying out in the kitchen. Cakes, cookies, candy; it just seemed to flow into the station from somewhere. It was a wonder he didn’t weigh five hundred pounds. He bit into the greasy doughnut.
“Damn it!” Jelly from the doughnut dripped on his new tie. He flipped the edge up to his mouth, trying to lick it off, turned one of the many corners in the maze of cubicles and, as he did so, he bumped right into Darren, one of the administrative assistants in Homicide.
“Oops, sorry!”
Darren watched Frost lick the jelly from his tie. “Hey, when you’re done with your snack,” he chuckled, “they’re looking for you upstairs. Got a call on the Jane Doe. You might have a match.”
“No shit?” Frost asked, knowing it was Darren’s nature to joke around. The look on Darren’s face said it was no joke this time. “Thanks man,” he added over his shoulder as he quickly climbed the stairs two at a time.
Maybe, just maybe, we’re getting a break.
Frost choked down the last of his doughnut in one big bite and headed straight for The Pit. The area where Homicide gathered to brainstorm and bitch was his best bet at finding all his comrades. The other detectives looked up as Frost walked in. Addressing no one in particular, he asked if there had been a hit on the Missing Person’s report for their Jane Doe. Azarrella, a transfer from New York looking like he had slept in his suit, answered.
“Yeah, O’Malley down in Dispatch got the call about an hour ago. Some guy from California—Campomelli or Cametti something. Wife was up here on vacation. I guess this guy got a call from a “staff member” yesterday that his wife hadn’t been seen in a couple days. When he still hadn’t heard from her today, he called us.”
“Sounds like this guy lost his wife a long time ago,” one of the other detectives dryly observed.
“Yeah,” Azarrella snorted. “Anyway—blonde, five-feet seven inches, one hundred thirty pounds. Forty years old. Might be our Jane Doe.”
“We get a picture?” Frost asked him.
“The guy should have sent one by now. I had him send it to your e-mail.”
Frost hurried to his desk and slid out his keyboard. Calling up the secure e-mail log-in screen, he quickly typed in his user name and password. As his screen promptly filled with new messages, Frost scanned the list for something that resembled the name Azarrella couldn’t remember. Frost’s eye caught an entry that read Campelletti. He clicked on the e-mail and waited for it to open.
Detective, here is the picture of my wife, Sadie, taken just a couple of months ago. Please call me the minute you get this. Frank Campelletti.
Frost opened the attachment. A photo of a woman appearing to be in her late thirties popped up on t
he screen. Blonde and blue-eyed, with her joyful smile frozen in time, Sadie Campelletti looked like she had once been an attractive woman.
“So whatcha got?” inquired Azarrella, leaning over Frost’s shoulder. The unmistakable scent of garlic. No matter what time of day it was, Azarrella always reeked of the stuff.
“Well, appears our Jane Doe might be one Mrs. Sadie Campelletti.”
“Damn, quite a looker, isn’t she?” Azarrella offered as he bent over to get a closer look.
“Was,” Frost corrected. “She wasn’t looking so good last time I saw her.” The battered and swollen body found in the lake had done a first-rate job of disguising the woman’s beauty. After eighteen years on the force, Frost had seen more than his share of ugly. This one wasn’t the worst but it was still pretty bad.
Frost reached for his phone and motioned with his free hand for Azarrella to leave. He didn’t want an audience for this one. Two rings and a man picked up.
“May I speak to Frank Campelletti, please? This is Detective Bill Frost, from the Sullivan police department.”
“This is Frank Campelletti,” the man replied. “Is it her? Is it Sadie?” Frost heard the all-too-familiar sound of last hope in the man’s voice.
“Well, sir, you will have to come and ID the body, but there are similarities,” Frost explained as gently as he could. “When did she go missing?”
“My caretaker last saw her on Friday but he didn’t call me until yesterday.”
“When was the last time you saw your wife, Mr. Campelletti?”
“She left here Friday. Took the plane up to Sullivan.”
“And you have not spoken with her since?” Seemed like an awfully long time to Frost, seeing that they were husband and wife, but that was just another observation he’d file away for later.
“No. My caretaker was the last one to see her.”
“Does your wife have any identifying marks? Special jewelry she might have worn? Anything you can think of that could assist us in confirming her identity?”
“Uh, yes—yes.” The line went silent for a moment. “She has a small tattoo. On her ankle.” His voice faltered a bit. “It’s a small red heart. On her left ankle.”
Based on what Frost had heard from the divers at the scene, he knew they now had confirmation, but he had to follow standard procedures. He asked Mr. Campelletti if he would come to Sullivan as soon as possible to make a positive ID.
“Y--yes, of course,” Frank replied. “I can take the plane out of here in the morning.” After a moment, he added, “Detective? It’s her— isn’t it?”
Frost hated this part of his job. There were very long odds that it wasn’t Mr. Campelletti’s wife, but his gut told him otherwise. “Mr. Campelletti,” Frost carefully began, “The description is similar. I’m very sorry.”
They spent a few more minutes on the phone going over the details of Mr. Campelletti’s arrival and, after providing directions to the county morgue, Frost said goodbye. He leaned back in his chair and kept the receiver in his hand. Everyone dealt with grief differently, but Frost made a mental note of Mr. Campelletti’s controlled reaction. No detail in an investigation was insignificant. He would be there in the morning, arriving by private plane. Soon enough, Frost thought. Soon enough. In the meantime, he had a bunch of work to do. Still holding the receiver, Frost dialed the morgue.
Answering the inner office line, the ME tech joked, “You stab ‘em, we slab ‘em. Kirk here.”
Tommy Kirk, long desensitized to the offerings of the morgue, didn’t think twice about making dead body jokes. “Everyone has to find a way through it,” Kirk would explain in his offbeat, sick sense of humor. In reality, Kirk was a sensitive family man who went above and beyond to get a job done right, but an onlooker wouldn’t have seen that. In this line of work, people either laughed or they cried.
“Kirk? Frost. You got my Jane Doe on ice?” Frost asked, referring to the freezer in which they kept bodies pending ID and disposition orders.
“Hey man, yeah. Tox reports still out, but we have an idea on methodology,” Kirk told him. “She have a name yet?”
“Likely. Husband is flying in to ID in the morning. Whatcha got on cause?” Though he knew about the head trauma, he also knew to wait for the experts.
“Blunt force injury to the head using an instrument with a circular end, about an inch in diameter. Looks like it might have been a big hammer or something similar. She bled out; dead before she hit the water.” Kirk explained. “Looks like she had been there about two to three days, based on water temperature and condition of body. Oh, and one last thing.”
“What’s that?” Frost asked, wondering what else there could possibly be.
“She was roughly eleven weeks pregnant.”
“Shit.” It was all Frost could manage to say.
twenty-six
“SIR, THEY HAVE CLEARED US to land. It will just be a moment,” the pilot announced over the intercom. Startled from his catnap, Frank Campelletti couldn’t remember where he was. Touching down so gently that the passengers scarcely felt the landing, the Gulfstream shuddered only slightly as its brakes were applied. Frank gathered his thoughts as he watched the scenery rush past his small window.
Pushing the button on his private intercom, Frank thanked his pilot, Stan, for the smooth landing. He turned to his new personal assistant, Carol, and gave a slight nod to indicate his readiness. When the plane came to a complete stop on the tarmac, Carol unfastened her seat belt, stood and began to gather their things.
Sliding the door open on the compartment that held Frank’s wheelchair, she pulled out the chair and unfolded it. The plane, custom-built to accommodate the needs of its owner, allowed Carol to place the chair at an angle so he could maneuver himself into it from his seat. In one relatively graceful and continuous movement, Frank raised himself up using his now overdeveloped arms and swung his nearly-lifeless lower half into the awaiting chair. Carol adjusted Frank’s feet on the foot pedals as he smoothed out his suit pants. Well-groomed and fastidious, Frank was always “dressed and pressed.” But, after losing a great deal of sleep since he’d heard the news of Sadie’s disappearance, his otherwise tanned and handsome face appeared slightly more fatigued than usual. No one but those closest to him would see the difference.
Frank looked out the window and saw his chauffeured car. He had sent the car and driver ahead the day before so he’d have comfortable transportation upon arrival. The driver, standing next to the car door, waited patiently for his passengers to deplane.
“Okay, here we go,” Carol warned Frank, as she began moving his chair. She had turned out to be a most efficient and capable assistant, quickly learning the nuances of Frank’s personality and needs over the last few days. As Frank had hoped, theirs was turning into a comfortable yet still very professional relationship. He had always been a man of few words, so he appreciated her intuitive take on his needs. Her composure only served to emphasize what had been Vivian’s histrionics. Confined to his chair as he was, Frank had zero tolerance for nonsense. He found Carol to be a nice change.
With the use of a hydraulic lift, Frank was able to deplane quickly and easily. He and Carol made their way over to the awaiting car and left the pilot to tend to the plane. The chauffeur greeted them and lowered the ramp for access to the vehicle. He stowed their belongings in the back and waited until Carol had Frank and his chair all locked down before climbing into the driver’s seat. Carol climbed into the other side.
She once again marveled at the luxury of the outfitted vehicle and, like many times in the last few days, was impressed with how money could make a difficult situation more tolerable. From the flat plasma TV screen and leather seats to the crystal glasses and multitude of available beverages, this vehicle lacked no creature comfort. The fact that it had been custom-made to accommodate a wheelchair was even more impressive. Most of the transport vehicles Carol had been in before working with Frank were simply stripped down minivan conversions. This,
like everything else she had experienced since coming to work for Frank, was truly in another league.
“Do you have the address?” Frank inquired of the driver.
“Yes, sir. We’ll be there in about twenty minutes.” The driver’s somber tone mirrored everyone’s mood.
Frank hadn’t been to Sullivan since his accident. Come to think if it, he realized he hadn’t been there since he’d shown the house to Sadie for the first time. She had taken it on as her project, falling in love with it the minute she saw it.
Frank remembered the last time he’d seen Sadie. He had been running late for a meeting; she was packing for her trip here. Carol had been waiting in another room of the oversized house to allow them their privacy.
“Have a good trip,” he’d told her. “Make sure you get the roof on the guesthouse looked after. Let me know where you are.”
Frank couldn’t remember now if Sadie had even replied. He guessed his mind had been on his list for the day and the meeting that required his attendance—as it always was. He forced himself to try and remember the last details of their goodbye. Had they even kissed? The cold empty hole inside his gut whispered to his heart, hinting at the answer.
His reverie was interrupted when the car came to a stop outside a very plain, rectangular, three-story grey building on the east side of town. Except for a few small windows and a very simple, tinted-glass door entrance, the building appeared to be a big block of solid nondescript concrete. Not one to waste time, Frank worked the electronic controls, allowing him to exit the car. Neither Carol nor the driver made any move to assist. They knew better. Once out and on the driveway, Frank instructed them to remain in the car until he returned.